In the spring of 2004, I received a letter from a man in Des Moines, Iowa, named Chris Frosheiser. He had read a piece of mine about the war in Iraq that mentioned his son Kurt’s battalion, the 2-6 Infantry of the First Armored Division. Two weeks before the piece was published, Kurt had been killed by a roadside bomb, in Baghdad. Kurt’s death sent Chris on a journey in search of everything he could learn about the war, the circumstances of his son’s last days, American foreign policy, the nature of loss, you name it. Chris was one of those people who respond to grief by becoming more alive. He didn’t shrink from asking himself the hardest questions—indeed, he returned to them again and again: what had Kurt died for? what was the war about? how should Kurt’s father honor the memory of his son and other soldiers?
His letter began a relationship between us, by phone, e-mail, and—once—in person in Des Moines, that lasted four years. I wrote about the Frosheisers in this magazine, and again in “The Assassins’ Gate.” He would call me to read a passage from John Quincy Adams that he’d come across, in his continual self-education. Or to ask me if I’d heard what Joe Biden said about Iraq. I don’t know if Chris ever found answers that satisfied him and gave him peace. But I admired him enormously for his restless openness to the questions.
As if the combat death of his son wasn’t loss enough, these last couple of years Chris also carried the burden of prostate cancer. He was not a silently suffering Midwesterner, nor did he complain much. But he loved to talk, to reach out, to connect. This morning his daughter Erin wrote me to say that Chris died yesterday. I’m proud to have been his friend.